USPS plug-in not calculating correct rate in 2.4.0

-- url of the page with the problem -- : www.StutteringTherapyResources.com
-- HikaShop version -- : 2.4.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.4.0

With version 2.4.0, installed tonight, the USPS plug-in is no longer taking into account the shipping weight when calculating shipping. It is giving the same flat shipping amount (minimum per USPS) regardless of the weight of items in the cart. This worked earlier tonight. I then updated to the new version, and then it started giving me an inaccurate shipping rate. Help? Thank you! Scott

Hello Scott,
Firstly can you show me how did you configured your USPS shipping methods and the products that have on your cart through some screenshots ?
Thanks.

Sure. I have attached 4 screen shots:

1) USPS setup for media mail entry - i have not changed this, so it is the same as the configuration that worked perfectly (and has worked for over a year) until the update yesterday. Note that I have priority set up as a separate plug-in for reasons that I can't currently recall, but it has worked perfectly this way.

2) shipping options from front-end with 1 item in cart (showing $6.50 for media mail and $9.56 for priority)

3) shipping options from front-end with 5 items in cart (still showing $6.50 for media mail and $9.56 for priority) - before yesterday, it would have calculated a higher shipping cost based on the weight.

4) the product setup-page for that product demonstrating that I do indeed have the weight entered.

Again, it all worked fine until the update. I received an order before I did the update and it was right. I received an order after the update and it wasn't. I have re-installed the update and experimented with settings, but it continues to give the exact same prices for shipping. Note that these are the minimum shipping prices for media or priority, so it's just defaulted to some zero-weight, I guess.

I'll look forward to your help.

Hello,
Thanks for your feedback, can you test it with that last USPS version ?

No, I'm sorry - that only made the problem worse. Now it is indeed taking weight into account, but it is coming up with numbers that are nowhere near those from the USPS...

For example: for Media Mail:

1 book (1lb 15oz) SHOULD be, according to the USPS, $3.40. The plug-in gives me $4.13
2 books (3lb) SHOULD be $3.88, the plug-in gives me $6.03

So, that's even worse because now my website is charging people very high shipping rates that aren't correct.

Priority mail is wrong too (something like $18 instead of $9), but I didn't take the time to do a trial like this...i have to get the old one back installed (the one that undercharges) so people don't get mad at me.

Can we try again? Thank you,
Scott

Hello,
The algorithm of the last USPS version is currently grouping every products of your order on ONE package, and then send that information to the USPS platform, and finally the USPS shipping methods is displaying what the rates that are returned by the USPS platfrom.
[strike]The problem is maybe coming from the fact that before the update, the USPS plugin was sending your product separately through different packages.[/strike]

Okay, if that's the case, what would the solution be? And, how would I figure out if that is indeed what it's doing differently now than before so I can fix it?

(I would think that if it's separating packages, then the shipping for 2, 3, 4 items etc. would be a multiple of the base shipping for 1 item.)

All I know is that it was correct before, and now it is incorrect. I'd love to get it back to where it's correct as soon as possible, because i lose money every time someone orders more than one item. (It's not much at this point, fortunately, but it could easily become a problem if someone entered an order for several products at once, which of course I'd love to see.)

Is there some way to get the old plug in from 2.3 so i can put that part back to the way it used to be? That worked great!

Help? Thanks,
Scott

All I know is that it was correct before, and now it is incorrect. I'd love to get it back to where it's correct as soon as possible, because i lose money every time someone orders more than one item. (It's not much at this point, fortunately, but it could easily become a problem if someone entered an order for several products at once, which of course I'd love to see.)

I just compared the OLD USPS version with the current version, and we actually fixed a bug from the old version which was not sending every product information.

Is there some way to get the old plug in from 2.3 so i can put that part back to the way it used to be? That worked great!

A solution can be to :
- "reduce" the price directly by setting a negative value through the "Percentage" option of your shipping method configuration page.
OR
- Use a manual shipping method to directly adapt your shipping price.

I'm sorry...should I take your response to mean that you will not be fixing this problem?

I understand that you may have fixed one bug with the update, but you have clearly introduced another. The system is not calculating the proper shipping rates through the USPS plugin. It used to calculate the correct shipping rates, and now it does not.

Will you be fixing this issue? If not, I will need to look for another solution in a hurry. Using manual shipping is not an option because of the numerous combinations of possible weights and shipping distances. Reducing the price through negative percentages is also not appropriate.

The system - which, again, used to work perfectly, bug or no, is simply not providing the correct shipping prices.

I would appreciate knowing if you will be attempting to fix this or if I need to get a different shop installed in a hurry. The current situation is not tenable.

Thank you.
S

Hi,

I'm not familiar with the shipping plugins development and I cannot say if that's a bug or just a correction which looks like a bug to you because it works differently than before.
Anyway, the simplest here is to just install the USPS shipping plugin of the previous version on your website and that will work like before.
Here it is :



Just install it via the Joomla installer and you'll get back the behavior of the USPS plugin from the 2.3.5

Hi Nicolas - I appreciate your posting that. Unfortunately, I installed what you sent and it went right back to the same behavior as the 2.4.0 update - that is, providing the same (base) shipping rate regardless of the weight. (just like the images I posted - 1 book or 5 books, it charges the same minimum shipping rate.) So, I'm wondering if you send me the 2.4.0 version accidentally?

For what it's worth, I would be fine with it working differently - all i know is that the new version is not giving me figures that match at all with what the US Postal Service charges, and neither is the revised version that I was sent. So, perhaps it's not a bug, but the numbers aren't correct. If there is a setting I"m missing, I would be more than happy to change it. I'm sorry if this is my oversight. I just want the shipping figures to be right.

And, to buy some time while we try to figure this out, I did just re-install the entire 2.3.5 version of Hikashop, and it goes back to the original (correct) behavior of providing the correct shipping costs... it scales appropriately by weight, and the numbers match the USPS website. So, I can live with that until the plug-in is feeling better.

I'll look forward to any further action on this, but in the meanwhile, I am no longer in crisis.

Scott

Hi,

I assure you that the USPS plugin I sent is the one from HikaShop 2.3.5. You can open its files and you'll see the version number in them.
I'll let mohamed check on the issue next week as he knows the shipping plugins way better than me.

Okay, well all I know is that when I installed it, the system went back to the behavior of charging a flat rate for all packages regardless of weight - that's the same behavior it started doing when I installed 2.4.0.

Then, when I went back to the full 2.3.5 version, the system began working correctly - as it has until I put in 2.4.0.

I know nothing about this, of course, but perhaps that suggests that the problem is not with the plug-in? If the 2.3.5 plug-in that you sent, in the context of the 2.4.0 system was giving incorrect results, then perhaps the plug-in itself was fine all along but there's some other issue elsewhere in 2.4.0 that's causing it to not function (e.g., perhaps it's not getting passed the weight in 2.4.0, so that's why it always gives the same flat shipping rate regardless of the weight).

Again, I don't know anything...just trying to think of what the issue might be. I'll stay with the full 2.3.5 version until we can get it sorted.

Thanks for your efforts on this, and sorry for the trouble.
S

Hi,

The 8 November 2014, I rewrite the USPS plugin in order to fix an issue for the processing of the package size/weight.
There was an error in the algorithm and when I saw it, I started a re-factoring of the plugin (which was not design by the HikaShop team originally).
You can see the corresponding thread here : www.hikashop.com/forum/install-update/87...alculate-intern.html
The refactoring of the plugin is using a function called "getOrderPackage" ; this function has been introduce directly in the HikaShop helper for the 2.3.5 release.

You can download the version of the plugin in the other thread which embed the "getOrderPackage" function like it was on that date. So, even if you are using the USPS plugin from the 2.3.5, the content of the algorithm for the creation the packages is in the HikaShop helper itself.
Between HikaShop 2.3.5 and HikaShop 2.4.0, the getOrderPackage received some modifications in order to support a new "limitation" feature.

I will personally review the modifications of the getOrderPackage function in order to check what changed and what could be the repercussions.
What I can recommend you is to use the version the plugin I submit on November 8 because the getOrderPackage is written in the plugin itself (it override the function define in the helper), and it is a really close version of the algorithm that you can find in the HikaShop 2.3.5 helper.

Regards,

HI Jerome - thanks much. I appreciate the explanation and the guidance. And, I appreciate that you'll take a look and see what might have happened! I'll follow the recommendations below in the meanwhile. Again, thank you!
S

Has this been resolved? I'm suffering the same exact problem.

It doesn't look like it has been concluded in that other tread Jerome linked too.

But I did try the patch his plugin from the 11/8/14 and it seems to be working like before. The site in question has such low rates and orders are slow this time of year so didn't catch it right away. But hat version of the plugin is pulling the correct numbers for us when compared to USPS calculator and even adding our $2.00 extra on top of it correctly.

I'm afraid I have heard absolutely nothing... I have just continued to use the old version of HikaShop, hoping for a solution. I haven't used the new version plus the patch. The first one i tried didn't work, and I didn't have time to figure it out, given that Jerome said he'd be taking a look at it. This is the busiest time of year for me, so i was just hoping for some magical email that would say that it's all fixed... perhaps that will still come?

Hi,

Jerome added patches to the 2.4.0 version on the 14th of April in order to have the new package generation algorithm working properly in all the cases.
So if you downloaded the 2.4.0 after that date, it should work properly.

Aaah -there's that magical email I was hoping for! Thank you Nicolas and thank you Jerome. I didn't know about the new patch. I am very pleased. I'll download it later today! Much appreciated.

This is still a problem in 2.5.0 (7/22/2015).

I have to go back to the version Nicolas posted here based on 2.4.0.

Any reason why this is not being in incorporated into the newer versions?